This invention relates to a fuel cell drive system which supplies reformate gas containing hydrogen to a fuel cell.
In a fuel cell drive system disclosed in JP-A-H10-64571 published by the Japanese Patent Office in 1998, oxidation of a CO removal catalyst is avoided by filling a CO removal device with hydrogen when the system has stopped running. When the system restarts, the CO removal catalyst oxidized by air is reduced using the hydrogen gas.
However, in the above system, the CO removal device is filled with hydrogen to avoid oxidation of the catalyst when the system has stopped running, so a hydrogen filling/supply device must be differently set with the driving device, and it makes the system complicated.
In the case of catalyst reductive reaction using the filled hydrogen gas on startup, system needs the device to supply the heat required for the reaction. Further, because reduction is performed when the system restarts, it is impossible to reactivate the catalyst until the system is stopped running even if the catalyst oxidizes and deteriorates during running.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to reduce the catalyst of a fuel cell drive system by means of a simple construction, and to make the drive system work efficiently.
In order to achieve above object, this invention provides a drive system for a fuel cell, composing a reformer which has a catalyst and generates gas supplied to the fuel cell, a start-up combustor which is provided upstream of the reformer and supplied with fuel and air to perform combustion and a controller functioning to generate high temperature reducing gas in the start-up combustor by burning the supplied fuel and air, and supply the high temperature reducing gas to the catalyst reaction part, and reduce the catalyst in the reformer.
The details as well as other features and advantages of this invention are set forth in the remainder of the specification and are shown in the accompanying drawings.